Weld was No. 1 in nation last year for consumer fraud complaints

Maybe a lot of people in Weld County know who to call in the right situation.

Maybe they just like to complain.

But few agree that Weld, better known to federal statisticians as the Greeley Metropolitan Statistical Area, is as rife with fraud as a Federal Trade Commission report suggests.

The FTC this week reported that for 2006, Weld was No. 1 in the nation with 466 consumer fraud complaints per 100,000 people; it also reported the area was fourth in the nation in identity theft, with 245 complaints per 100,000 people.

“We certainly aren’t seeing those kinds of numbers presented to us for prosecution,” said Weld District Attorney Ken Buck. “We have been looking at the fraud area for a while because we think we have an issue here, but those numbers are even higher than we thought. Ranking No. 1 in the country is more of an issue than I thought we had.”

Several agencies report consumer fraud to the FTC, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Social Security Administration and the Internet Crime Complaint Center, to name a few. Complaints are not forwarded by local law enforcement agencies.

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Likewise, many complaints don’t make it to the local police.

“What I think is happening, is that sometimes people will report that there’s been a foreign money offer or some type of Internet scam … but they never report it to us because they don’t get suckered,” said Greeley Police Chief Jerry Garner. “We get consumer fraud and obviously we’ve had some hits on ID theft, but when you’re looking at fraud, people who write bad checks or use (someone’s else’s checks) are probably our greatest problems.”

Buck’s office last year prosecuted 331 cases of fraud, which included identity theft, forgery and criminal impersonations.

The FTC report showed that Weld had 1,023 consumer complaints in 2006, most of which were because of Internet or email solicitations.

“It must mean that Weld residents are incredibly proactive in filing their information when they feel like they’ve been potentially wronged by a company,” said Pam King, president of the Mountain States Better Business Bureau, whose own consumer fraud complaint numbers from Weld topped out at 111 last year, while complaints from neighboring Larimer County residents totaled 511. The BBB reported to the FTC complaints on 552 companies, 67 of which were in Larimer, 29 of which were in Weld.

The FTC report also showed there were 537 identify theft complaints in Weld last year. Nationally, credit card fraud was the No. 1 contributor to identity theft. Locally, the same is true but a distant second is employment-related identity theft, which lately has been linked to illegal immigration. In the Greeley numbers, employment-related fraud complaints came in at 21 percent of all identity theft claims.

“What we’re seeing in the numbers is that the main driver in the Greeley area for consumer complaints is identity theft,” said Nate Strauch, spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General’s office. “When you look at the national numbers, employment-related fraud, which is what most people would assume translates closely to problems of illegal immigration, makes up about 14 percent.”

Local law enforcement representatives, however, say their experiences don’t match the high FTC numbers. Identity theft, for example, is not chiefly an illegal immigration issue, Garner said.

“Illegal immigrants using false papers contributes to our fraud crime, but we have lots and lots of people who are doing that crime who are not illegal,” Garner said. “We have a big bunch of meth freaks and drug addicts who use stolen checks (for money). It’s a combined problem.”

Weld Sheriff John Cooke said his office handles quite a bit of identity theft, which can be as simple as suspects giving false names when being booked into the jail.

“They’ll give the name of a brother or a friend. We’ve seen quite a bit of that,” Cooke said.

Cooke added that his office also sees an increase in Internet fraud, but said he believes it is because of the Internet’s expansion.

King said she was surprised at the FTC numbers for Weld, but she also theorized that the area may be a perfect place for scammers to prey, given the different socio-economic areas that comprise Colorado’s largest county.

“It could very definitely have to do with the targeted audiences,” she said. “It’s not uncommon for a scam artist to target people with bad credit, or with low incomes, or low education levels, or student populations or the senior market.”

King said consumer complaints rise about 5 percent a year at the BBB, which covers 38 counties in northern Colorado and Wyoming. Strauch at the Attorney General’s office said the number of complaints has remained “fairly steady” but it is starting to dip, though slightly.

Identity Theft

Identity theft topped consumer fraud complaints nationally or the past seven years, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The most common type of identity theft was in fraudulent use of credit cards, comprising 25 percent of complaints.

Government documents or benefits fraud comprised 10 percent of complaints, with fraudulent tax returns coming in highest at 6.2 percent; fraud involving the misuse of Social Security is not even 1 percent of complaints, while fraud involving drivers’ license was 1.4 percent of complaints.